


A Chance Encounter, 2011

by Callmeisolde



Series: Matt and Nat Take New York [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Almost maybe canon compliant, Am I any good at writing fight scenes? you tell me, Blind Character, Canon Disabled Character, Chance Meetings, F/M, Fluff, Foggy and Matt are roommates, I got a whole timeline worked out, Marvel doesn't make it easy, Slow Burn, a littttle bit of plot, but only just, by sharing a bachelor apartment, chance encounters, pre-avengers, saving up to start Nelson and Murdock, with some plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 06:04:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12811227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmeisolde/pseuds/Callmeisolde
Summary: Matt still has no idea who she is, but she's popped up more than once and things are getting interesting. Natasha knows almost everything because she's Natasha. The most intriguing part for her, she wants to know even more.Or, Daredevil stumbles onto a S.H.I.E.L.D operation in Hell's Kitchen and almost gets himself killed but Natasha thinks it's cute and follows him home. Can stand alone but follows previous work, "Winter In New York, 2009".





	A Chance Encounter, 2011

Matt

Matt has been tracking this weapons shipment for days. First came reconnaissance, staking out the key players, listening in. It didn’t take long to figure out who their buyer was, track him down, keep him out of the picture so Matt can intercept the weapons instead. He approaches the warehouse on foot from the front, takes out the perimeter guards with ease, heads to the breaker on the side of the building. Flips the switch.

Darkness is a friend of Matt Murdock’s. Not so much these guys.

Matt slips through a window and falls between two disoriented thugs. He knocks their heads together and drops them in a heap before the others even know they’re under attack. Mechanical clicks, gunpowder igniting three feet to his left as one of four remaining baddies — heartbeat erratic, ratcheting up to mid-nineties — depresses the trigger of his firearm. _Pop pop._ Two trails of fire through the cool night air. He’s firing at nothing, the bullets not even aimed in Matt’s direction.

The scent of the warehouses is heady with sweat and the pheromones of fear. One of the other thugs responds to the sounds and smells by depressing his own trigger. He empties an entire clip, several bullets going wild and several finding Matt's general location in the dark. General at best. Matt rolls between two frantic heartbeats and kicks up, sending one man sprawling, groaning. Matt reaches and grabs the back of the guys leather jacket, throws him towards another heartbeat. If this is what bowling is like, maybe he’ll agree next time Foggy invites him on a double date.

The two pins clatter into each other and sprawl on the ground, groping blindly for purchase. Matt grabs the collar of one, punches him hard — once, twice. He’s unconscious. Matt ducks the blind scrabbling of the next guy grabs his arm and leverages him into a brick wall. He falls down limp. One more thug goes down easy with a jab to the side of the head that bounces him against a metal post.

The last man is different. Matt paces around him, considering. He’s not panicked by the dark, had listened calmly as his cronies went down but moved steadily, slowly towards the exit. Maybe he’s hoping Matt can’t see him.  _Too bad, buddy, that’s never stopped me before._

This guy must be the leader. He’s built differently than the others. Tall, Matt can sense dense musculature coiled around a large skeleton. He’s built like a tree, tackling him would probably make Matt look pathetic. The big guy's heart is big as he is, blood moving in a loud _whoosh_ that makes Matt uneasy like maybe he isn’t even a regular human. He seems to sense Matt drawing closer even in the darkness, maybe his eyes are adjusting to the dark. He moves back a little faster, his feet finding a sure path to the door. The main door is mechanical, he hits a switch on the wall and the metal squeals as it peels aside. There are street lamps buzzing in the parking lot just beyond and Matt pinpoints the exact second the guy sees him for the first time. His heart rate spikes.  _Whoosh whoosh whoosh_ , like being trapped in a water slide.

Guy backs up and Matt follows, feeling the air open up around him as they step into the parking lot from the confines of the warehouse. He scoped this area out yesterday night, knows it’s a long rectangular lot bordered on two sides with chain link fence, open on only one end to the street. There’s a steel shipping container sitting lengthwise parallel to the warehouse. The lot on the other side is empty. There are two streetlamps, one on either end. There’s a stack of wooden crates near the shipping container, a few empty, some still filled with shipping materials.

Matt rolls to the side, trying to get under the guy's defenses, surprise him. He manages to get there fast enough to land a punch before the guy is whirling to face him. He takes a swipe and Matt smells treated leather and the tang of something metal. The sound of the swipe is a high pitched song, slicing through the air instead of pushing it aside. The sound of well-sharpened knives. He rolls and launches himself up and over another attack. He’s being pushed back towards the shipping container.

Can’t let himself be hit. _No fair_ , that’s his primary strategy for tiring a guy out. He’ll have to stay quick, get the big guy to swipe and slash until his arms turn heavy with effort. Matt makes a quick decision and grabs an empty crate, lobbing it in the direction of the heartbeat and ducking underneath to get in his licks while his assailant is forced to deal with the projectile. One punch to the knee, forcing him to stagger, one to his stomach, stealing his breath. Have to make the hits count, hit him hard if not often.

There’s the crackle of a radio somewhere and Matt ignores it, takes it for an earpiece on one of the unconscious men inside. Rolls to the side and lobs another crate. Knife guy slashes through it with an animalistic grunt and Matt has to roll again to extract himself from range. 

Everything fades out for a moment, too many stimuli when Matt tries to concentrate on a voice. Female. Familiar. It belongs to a heartbeat several feet away from the fight, crouched low next to something solid and smelling like chemically treated pine. He’s thinking about that when things shift sideways again. A whirring like a frisbee comes at him but it’s metallic, big. The object hits knife guy in the back of the legs and he sprawls forward, putting Matt in the danger zone.

Has to think fast, kicks off the shipping container and launches himself into a flip to avoid knife guys swipe. He sets down at the guys back just as another pounding heartbeat lands directly next to him. The vibrating disk hums towards the newcomer and makes a magnetic sucking noise as it hits the guy's arm and sticks. The air vibrates in a way Matt’s never experienced before. He gets, for a second, a clear picture of the Man standing next to him. He’s huge, towering, everything about his body says trained fighter. Broad shoulders, brick chest. He reminds Matt instantly of his Dad. 

Already disoriented, Matt barely has time to register new guy winding up for a swing, not at Knives, but at him. He grits his teeth and uses the kinetic energy still coiled in his quads to launch himself back.

Before he can return to the fight the woman is rushing forward. She moves like an acrobat, her whole body coiled and then loosed at the exact right moment. She dives in low and jabs something into knife guys foot, the air crackles with electricity Matt feels on the tip of his tongue, every hair on his body getting up to dance. Nothing happens. Rubber soles.

The woman and the fighter drive Knives towards Matt, he senses the woman lunging and he kicks the side of the shipping container to get height, driving downwards with his fists. Fighter knocks Knives forward with a kick and he splays right into the woman's arms. She tries to grapple him to the ground but he shakes her off with an impressive amount of strength. Matt tries to force Knives off his balance with a targeted jab but Fighter takes another swipe at him. He clenches his jaw with frustration as he’s forced to dodge sideways, losing track of Knives. Three parallel blades sing through the air — were there always three? — and bite into Matt’s abdomen.

He gasps, chokes in surprise, and drops to his knees.

Before he can take stock of the injury, the woman kicks him in the shoulder and he flies sideways, flat to the pavement. For a second, everything fades out. He can feel the torn flesh, the blades nicked his abdominal muscles but didn’t penetrate. The gashes are deeper at one end than the other, this is where the blood is rushing fastest. His skin is suddenly cold, he’s sweating. _Get your breathing under control._ The too fast suck and laboured exhale isn’t helping his stomach. He steadies himself with a measured inhale from his diaphragm instead of his belly, exhales. Grits his teeth around the next inhale so he can rise to his feet.

The fighting has continued about five feet to his left. He senses electricity buzzing in the woman's hand again as she tries to hit to Knives centre mass. Matt takes the opportunity to duck under her arm and drive his fists into his solar plexus, bringing Knives forward into the woman's waiting kick. While he reels backward, she whirls on Matt and kicks him in the chest. The impact isn’t as hard as he was expecting, she’s not trying to hurt him, just drive him out of the fight. He feels a rush of anger, blood surging to his face. He shoots back up with a growl and takes a furious step towards her. She shoves him back with open palms.

“Stay back!” She orders, wasting no time making sure he obeys before rounding on Knives without him. Matt seethes, paces back and forth a few times before the adrenaline starts to ebb and the blood drains from his head.

 _Shit._  He’s suddenly sore and tired. Achey.  _Shit._ Can’t stick around. Not like this.

He takes a few quick breaths to get his energy back up, jumps and scrabbles up the side of the shipping container, drops down over the fence on the other side into the empty lot.  _Shit. Bleeding._ Smell of Chinese food from the corner lot is overwhelming. _Don't stop. Don't be sick._

It’s not far to the apartment he shares with Foggy. One bedroom, one sofa bed. He really want’s that sofa bed right now. Can’t go there yet. Not with three open stab wounds. He stumbles up a fire escape. No problem. He plans for shit like this. This is a normal Tuesday. Except not really. Matt hasn’t been a vigilante for that long. He’s still not sure he likes that word. Just trying to make his city a better place, get criminals off the street. Not his fault that being blind means he has to settle for the law part of law enforcement.

_Have to keep going, quickly. Can’t rest. Rest and you’re dead._

As long as Matt does what he does, and has to keep his identity secret, he has a pretty good cover. He has a pretty good double life. He feels alive. More alive than he ever has before, all those years listening to the ghost telling him not to fight. _Don’t be like me, Matty. Don’t waste your life. Be somethin’._

Big guy, fighters body, shoulders like a bodybuilder, arms like a boxer. Who was that guy?

And the woman, she moved with grace and precision. Matt thinks about the way the air puffed and swayed around her face when she moved, like maybe she had long hair. When he tries to picture it, all he can think is the word _bouncy_ , and that sounds absurd. There was a trace of her scent that pinged at his memory, jasmine? 

He shakes his head, clearing it. Drops into the alley and stumbles forward when he doesn’t quite make the landing. His stomach muscles are screaming and his limbs feel heavy and cold. He reaches out and traces his hand along the bricks, feeling their alignment, using the straight line of mud between bricks to keep himself from sagging forward. He follows the alley to his storage container. Fumbles in a pocket for the key and has to hold his breath when he lifts the door, his abs complaining against every minor exertion.

The medkit is on a long table. He finds the QuickClot gauze at the top. It smells different than the normal gauze, there are traces of chemical agents in the fibers. He pulls up his shirt and applies it over the oozing part of the slashes. Measuring his breathing, Matt finds the army cot on the short wall and lowers himself onto it.  _Can’t go into shock._ Covers himself with a blanket and taps the timer button on his watch twice.  _Ten minutes. That’s it._

_#_

The watch is vibrating and beeping at him which means he slept through the quiet alarm. Time to get up.

Still prone, he peels up the edges of the gauze. The blood smells stale, a few minutes old, more of it in the gauze than the surface of the wounds. Bleeding is slowing. Sitting up is the worst. He hates sitting up. He tries to use his elbows to do the work instead of his stomach but it hurts like hell. He gets up, light-headed, and fishes in the medkit for antiseptic cream, saline, clean bandages. He keeps the sutures kit closer to the bed.

Cleaning and disinfecting are tasks he rather not focus on, mind trailing off in a million directions, muscle memory taking over. There’s a young boy with asthma sleeping in a nearby apartment building and Matt listens to the wheezing as he stitches, willing the kid to take deeper breaths. Tries to deepen his own breathing as though that might help.

He bandages his wounds and gingerly changes clothes, favouring his stomach, arm unconsciously hovering near his belly to protect the tender area. Tosses the bloody gauze and the torn clothes under the table and locks everything up.

Has just enough energy to call a cab. He would usually make sure Foggy was asleep and then come in the window, but maybe tonight he could tell Fog he met a girl for a drink. Stayed out late. Maybe he would tell Foggy he got mugged by some street thugs. He’d have to come up with something to say about the fact he couldn’t stand straight when he walked. Stomach flu? Ya, that would work. I’m nauseous, Foggy, not favouring a stab wound. Being a vigilante must be easier without roommates.

The cab driver gives him a second look when Matt tells him the address. It’s not that far a walk. Matt can imagine the thoughts that follow,  _oh, blind guy._  He wants to kick the back of the driver's seat, stomach hurts too much. Knows that’s not something he would normally do.

The stairs are agony. Why are all the buildings in Hell’s Kitchen walk-ups? Matt decides he’s spiraling into negative thought patterns and spends a few minutes on the second-floor landing centering himself with a breathing exercise that removes and releases stress. The good thing about blood loss, his senses are dulled, he doesn’t feel like his head is going to explode. That’s a problem for tomorrow.  

He makes it to the third floor, gratefully turns his key in the lock.

The scent of the apartment says  _home_.  _Foggy. Safe._ A cloud of scents Matt would, in any other context, describe as miasmic. Two-day-old cheese and pepperoni pizza grease absorbed into chemically treated cardboard. A metal pot set aside on the stove that still has a film of oil and a few unpopped popcorn kernels from their movie marathon three nights ago. It’s Foggy’s turn to do dishes, and as per usual, he’s dragging his feet about it. Normally Matt minds, tonight, he doesn’t. He doesn’t even mind that there’s a bag of half eaten cheezits in the trash, which are usually forbidden as part of the chemical cheese powder family of junk food. Beyond the food smells, there’s a loamy scent of chemicals that break down into vanilla and almond, their collection of law books. Polycarbonate plastic from the DVDs. Old, plush velvet that still smells like cat even though Foggy swears his grandma's cat died ten years ago and  _that chair is in mint condition, Matt_.

The sofa is mesmerizing. Matt feels a magnetic draw to the faux leather. Wax, dye, polyurethane, a little cotton peaking through the cracks. It’s the smell of sleep. Of movie night and reading a book while Foggy plays video games. It’s captured sweat and tears over the years, it holds the specific scent of Matt’s own skin, Foggy’s. The shampoo they share, the soap.  _Home._  He manages to shuffle out of his shoes, his pants. Lies down on the couch in his boxers and long sleeve shirt. Lets himself relax.

Before he drifts too far, Matt pulls the microfleece blanket from the back of the sofa over himself and kicks his feet up over the arm.

 _Safe._ He thinks just before sleep presses close and warm like a cocoon.

Natasha

She moves in low to the ground, silent, each footfall is chosen with stealth and accuracy in mind. Toe to heel. Dance like. She moves through the shadows like darkness is her partner, like it’s a waltz and not a mission. Steve is coming in from a block east, his position is at the front of the warehouse. Natasha falls into place at the back, entry point a window halfway up the side of the three-story brick wall in front of her, propped open for ventilation. She uses the grappling gun to get to the roof, positions herself just above the window, and waits.

A crackling in her ear, “In position.”

“Copy,” Natasha whispers.

“Hold position until the light is green.” SHIELD intelligence chimes in. Tactics wants them to wait for the buyers to show. It's sound practice for an arms deal like this but Natasha is wary. Rumour they’re following up on says one of the dealers might be an enhanced individual, and they’ve got some kind of Hammer tech. It all says high-risk to her. Priority should be taking them out of the game first, then setting a trap for the buyer, but she’s not giving the orders. Not yet.

There’s a commotion beneath her, the warehouse lights go out and she catches sounds of surprise from the arms dealers inside. “Tactics, light?”

“Red, agent. That’s not us.”

She leans forward over the edge, peers in the window and strains her senses to hear what she can. She get’s a few broken words, “find the breaker”, “what the fuck—” then the _tuck tuck_ of truncated gunfire. She watches the pattern of muzzle flashes in the dark, guns pointed up and flailing wildly, what are they shooting at? She hisses between clenched teeth, she’s a sitting duck if they’re shooting into the ceiling.

“Going in.”

“Negative agent, light is still red…”

“Natasha…” from Steve, but she’s already swinging down and into the darkness. She lands silently on four points, absorbing the impact. The darkness suits her fine, no one has to know she’s even here. She moves behind a metal object, shielding herself from any other weapon discharges. When the  _tuck tuck_ 's subside and the smell of gunpowder hovers in the air she strains to hear the outcome. There’s low, muffled breathing near her position, someone unconscious? The metal door at the front of the warehouse squeals slightly and starts to slide open. Quick, circling footsteps and the sounds of some kind of scuffle moving away from her towards the exit.

“Steve, fighting headed your way. Do not engage until I’m there.”

“Copy. What happened inside?”

Natasha steps out from behind her cover, her eyes have adjusted to the filtered moonlight and street lamps. She can make out objects in the centre of the room. She makes her way there and finds the weapons. Some of the Hammer tech gives off a faint blue glow, there’s a lot of it. Enough to be more than a thorn in the side.  

“Tactics, marking the cache, send extraction.” She sets a marker on the stack of crates and activates a force field. No one is getting these weapons but SHIELD. That taken care of, her priority is the enhanced individual they heard about. Rumour is he’s big, strong, too strong to be just human. Likes knives. A little too much.

“Steve, moving to flank your position.”

“Copy.”

The sounds of the fight have moved out of the warehouse and into the small parking lot outside. As she makes her way there she counts four unconscious thugs. None of them fit their vague description of the enhanced. The parking lot is lit by two street lamps. Natasha positions herself just inside the doorway and peers around the edge, matching two entangled figures to the sounds of fighting. No guns, just the  _thawk thawk_ of fists meeting flesh. The enhanced individual is, in fact, a big guy. Almost as big as Steve, not quite. He’s wearing some kind of gloves, not Hammer tech, each glove has three blades supported by the knuckles. He’s going for some kind of Wolverine thing. Natasha decides to call him Idiot One.

The guy he’s engaging is lean, small in comparison, taller than Natasha, but muscular. He’s wearing all black and some kind of mask pulled over his face. He might be smaller, but he’s quick. He ducks and bobs away from every swipe of Idiot One’s claws. His footing reminds Natasha of a boxer, but he combines mixed martial arts and acrobatics easily, leaping with a twist and a flip, landing with a roll out of the way. He’s always one step ahead like he knows what Idiot One is doing before it happens.

Natasha slips out the doorway and blends with the shadows, moving around so she can flank them. Steve, she knows, is directly above on the building's roof, waiting for her signal. She makes it all the way to the right and crouches in the shadow of a wooden crate, watching for an opening.

“Permission to engage.” Steve wants in. The secret part of her mission is evaluating Captain America, recently thawed out, determining if he’s ready to lead something as big and expensive as the Avengers Initiative. This is their second mission together and she already has a pretty good idea what kind of man he is, the kind who’s bouncing up and down on both feet right now itching to get in the middle of whatever they’ve stumbled into.

“Negative.” She whispers, “Let’s see who comes out on top.” She’s not going to wait quite that long, not if she doesn’t have to, but inserting themselves too early is a sure way to lose one or both of the Idiots before them. Her priority is still capturing the enhanced, and they need to be ready in case he kills Idiot Two and makes a break for it. Besides, Idiot Two might not be such an idiot after all. He’s holding his own, enhanced or not, losing some ground, but learning as he goes. He isn’t a match for the first guy, strength wise, and he can’t risk taking a hit from the claws so he dances backward, always just a little bit faster than his assailant. He starts picking up crates and lobbing them at Idiot One, forcing the stronger man to stop and deal with the projectiles long enough that Idiot Two can dive under his swipe and land a few hits. He doesn’t seem to have any weapons despite his fists, but each hit is well placed.

Steve is getting antsy, “Nat, I’m intervening.”

“Negative.” She hisses. They shouldn’t be able to hear her but Idiot Two cocks his head sideways, his movement stuttering to a stop for a second. Steve’s shield whips down from the roof and strikes Claws in the back of the legs, sending him forward to his knees. This puts him in range of Idiot Two, he swipes and to compensate the fast guy has to launch himself into the air. He somersaults forward over Idiot One’s head just as Steve makes his dramatic three-point landing from the roof, catching up his shield at the same time. All this puts Steve and Idiot Two directly next to each other, behind Claws. Steve swings but fast guy flips backward, extracting himself momentarily from the fight.

Natasha knows an opening when she sees one. She whips forwards under Idiot One as he rises and digs an electric shock baton into his foot. Miscalculation. Whatever footwear he’s wearing diffuses the electricity into the ground and he kicks out. She rolls to the side and comes back up with a punch, her and Steve pushing the guy left with every attack.

Fast guy’s back on his feet and re-entering the fray. He goes up when Natasha goes down and they both land their hits. Steve ducks under a swipe and plants a kick that knocks Claws backward into Natasha. She tries to get her arms around his shoulder but he’s stronger than her physically and shakes her loose. Steve doesn’t seem sure who he should be concentrating on. He takes a swipe at Idiot Two and Fast guy dodges to the side, bringing him temporarily into Claws range of attack. He tries to get away from the swipe Claws takes at him but he’s backed himself against a shipping container and three ugly gashes appear across his torso, crimson flying to the pavement.

Idiot Two lets out a small strangled sound of protest and drops to his knees. Natasha takes a moment to kick him in the shoulder so he goes all the way down on his side, removing him from the range of Claws next attack. Idiot One digs his knives into the metal of the shipping container and struggles for a second to remove them, long enough that Steve lands a hit that not only dislodges him but sends him sprawling four feet away. Natasha follows the fight, leaving Idiot Two — definitely an idiot, she decides — somewhere behind them on the ground.

Claws doesn’t stay down. He pops back up and swipes at Steve. Natasha keeps her back to Fast Guy, hoping he’ll stay prone, but he doesn’t either. He tries to re-enter the fight, coming in under Natasha’s shock baton and Claws swiping gloves and landing another punch to Idiot One’s solar plexus. Claw doubles forward into Natasha’s kick. As he flies backward towards Steve, Natasha wastes another moment kicking Idiot Two back out of the fight.  _Stay down._

He shoots up with a strangled gasp and tries to get back into range. Natasha shoves him this time, open palmed, backward. “Stay back!”

She whirls, kicking Claws in the face right before he takes a swipe at Steve. She loses sight of Idiot Two long enough to finally get her shock batons under Claws defences, jabbing him in the armpit where he isn’t wearing any armour or padding. He shakes, vibrates for a second, goes down on his face.

Natasha allows herself a measured inhale, Steve does the same, then she rounds to find Idiot Two up and vanished.

“Where did he go?” Steve needs some training in proper breathing techniques.

“Secure Idio—the enhanced.”

“Copy.” She feels more than sees Steve’s nod, already moving towards the shipping container to track the blood splatter on the pavement. Drops indicate Idiot Two likely scrambled up the side of the shipping container, using it to leap over the chain link fence on the other side.

“Enhanced individual subdued and tagged for the extraction team.” Steve approaches from behind, hands on his hips as he surveys the blood splatter. “Who do we think guy number two is?”

“Not sure.” Natasha shakes her head. “He seemed to be after the same thing we were, he took out the thugs in the warehouse. Didn’t pull a weapon. Might have taken down Claws eventually if we didn’t intervene.”

“Hey,” Steve sounds hurt. “We could have taken them  _both_  in.”

“Wasn’t the mission.” Natasha’s voice doesn’t betray much. She takes a run at the shipping container and scrabbles up the side, tracks the blood across the flat metal top and drops over the side into the next lot.

Steve lands next to her a moment later. “Guy number two, he could also be enhanced.”

“Certainly seems possible.”

“We let him go, he just becomes next week’s mission, right?”

“Maybe.”

Steve huffs a bit. Natasha tracks the blood drops down a dark alleyway towards a three-floor walk up with a Chinese restaurant at the bottom. There’s a fire escape, a bloody smear on the rail. She starts climbing.

“Nat,” Steve continues behind her. “Don’t we have a responsibility to bring these guys in?” _Cut him some slack, Nat, he's still learning the ropes._

“He wasn’t hostile towards us.” She shrugs, keeping her voice quiet in case Idiot Two is collapsed somewhere nearby.

“We have no way of confirming his intentions, and he wore a mask.” Steve’s not bothering with quiet. “Even if he’s some kind of vigilante, we have a moral obligation to bring him to the attention of the law…”

Natasha can feel a headache blooming. “I don’t see you dragging Tony Stark kicking and screaming to the nearest police station.” 

“But we’re monitoring him, or SHIELD is, right? He doesn’t do anything that isn’t sanctioned by Fury…”

Natasha pauses with her foot on the top step to aim a withering look over her shoulder. 

“Right." Steve deflates.

The blood splatter tapers off, she can see something glinting on one roof corner but instead of pointing it out she grits a sigh of frustration. “Lost him.”

Steve looks flustered, walks in a circle. “Tactics, we lost the mystery guy. Orders?”

The radio crackles, “Head to the safehouse and wait for the next mission. Extraction is complete.”

Natasha shrugs and they drop back into the alleyway.

#

A few hours later Nat ditches Steve and returns to the rooftop under the guise of getting a midnight snack. She considers what she knows about Idiot Two as she tracks the drying blood across the next several buildings. No weapons, he used non-lethal force on the goons even though they had guns and on Idiot One despite the claws. He kept his face hidden, not even eye holes in the mask, not taking any chances. He was wearing all black, tactical boots, cargo pants, nothing military issue or elite. Everything available on the internet or the nearest army surplus store.

Despite his low level of professionalism, he had moved with precision, almost a sense of precognition. How long had he trained? Natasha had trained since childhood to be as good as she was, something about the way this guy moved made her think he might have trained almost as long. There was something else about his technique that bothered her. His boxing moves were the most precise like that’s where he got the most formal instruction, some of his martial arts were just a fraction off, like maybe he learned them years ago and adapted the poses over time without formal oversight. Lack of discipline? Made up for with determination? Something in the set of his shoulders, his forced exhalation, his measured breathing.

The blood trail finally drops from the rooftops to another alleyway. Another smear like he’d been running his hand along the bricks, maybe for support? She follows it to a storage facility where it ends abruptly at a small container near the back of the lot, it’s fastened with a padlock. Easy pickings. She opens it within seconds and pulls the cord on the ceiling to get some light.

There’s a cot inside with a few blankets, a table against the longer wall with an open med kit. No sign of the idiot.

He stitched himself up, scissors and thread set to one side of the table. A stack of gauze pads on top of sterile saline and antiseptic in the medkit. There’s a garbage bag under the table and Natasha finds the remains of the black shirt and a bloody piece of QuickClot gauze. The tactical boots, mask and cargo pants are discarded near the cot. He patched himself up and changed clothes, headed back out.

Natasha’s not deterred. When the trail warms up, she never is. She closes up the storage container, replaces the lock and heads to the small office just off the street. She makes short work of the office door and quickly finds the appropriate files. Storage bay 62, Michael Burress. Could be a real name, but she doubts he’d take the chance. If anyone found the storage unit they wouldn’t be able to track him down unless his DNA was already in the system. The address and phone number might be equally made up. She’s not as sure.

Natasha pulls out her phone, it’s a Stark invention. She enters the number, no name attached, but with Stark’s satellite data she can pinpoint a location. Idiot left his burner on.

The satellite data leads her a few blocks north to a four-story walk-up apartment building smack dab in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen. Lucky Tony is such an insufferable genius, his software makes it easy to pinpoint an apartment midway up on the east corner. Natasha climbs the fire escape, then grapples to the appropriate window.

The apartment’s dark inside. She strains her eyes to make out what she can. It takes a minute to adjust. The soft blue glow from the clock on the oven lights the kitchen at the back of the apartment, the window opens into a generous living area. A figure is huddled on the couch against the long wall, chest rising and falling with deep, sleeping breath. Natasha grips the windowsill and applies gentle, even pressure. It gives instantly, sliding up like it’s kept carefully lubricated. Fast guy probably uses this window egress a lot.

Natasha steps into the room toe heel, feeling the warmth of a third story apartment wash over her. It’s a one bedroom layout but it looks like a couple people live here. She can hear light snoring from deeper inside. She can smell cheese powder and popcorn. There’s a bookshelf that holds almost as many DVD’s as books and an empty pizza box sits on the floor near the TV.

She takes a silent step closer to the couch and bites her lip to control the sound of her inhale. The guy under the blankets is Matthew Murdock. Attorney. Winter in New York, 2009.

His hair is a mess, sticking up at a series of unfortunate angles that confirms her original assessment about its comb-ability. He’s not as clean-shaven as he was the last time she saw him. His lips are parted in sleep, his eyes loosely closed. His skin is pale even in the yellow glow of the streetlamps. This is the guy. Blind? She glances around the room. The round, red glasses are folded on the coffee table within reach of the couch, the white and red cane is on the kitchen counter. She paces to the bookshelf and runs her fingers over the spines of a few books. Braille. Blind then. Or he managed to come up with and maintain a very complicated cover story.

Matt Murdock, she thinks, you’re a mystery.

For a moment she considers waking him. She has questions. She wonders if he remembers her. But the feeling in her gut, the wanting to know, settles into a warm pool of affection. Natasha likes the chase. She’d rather not spoil the game.

He’s shivering. Almost imperceptibly, a small quiver in his bottom lip as he inhales. A tremble in his shoulders as they shift against the sofa. There’s a thick wool blanket scrunched across a green velvet chair in the corner, Natasha pads softly over to it and picks the blanket up, drapes it over Matt and tucks it in on the sides.  

There’s a pad of legal paper and a pen on the end table. Natasha takes a moment to write a few words for Matt to find in the morning.

She toes her way back to the window and disappears into the night wondering as she goes how many years will pass until she sees Matt Murdock again.

Matt 

He doesn’t get up until mid-afternoon.

“Just nauseous, Foggy.”  He assures his friend. “Was out late.”

“Ya I noticed buddy, good for you. I have always said you’re too much of a homebody.”

“You’ve never said that. Ever.”

“That’s because I am a worrier,” Foggy admits, heartbeat, admittedly, sounding worried. “When you aren’t home before one AM I worry. Then I feel guilty for worrying because you are a grown man. Then I feel like an ableist asshole because I realise why I was worried in the first place. Then I say to myself, it’s not a big deal, he’s too much of a homebody, he needs other friends, time to himself, he deserves to be out as long as he wants! Let the man party!” Foggy’s volume is increasing and Matt wishes he had a remote to turn it down.

“U’r not an ableist asshole.” He mutters into the back of the sofa.  

“Thanks, bud.” Foggy sounds pleased, Matt lets himself drift a little bit further from the room.

“Hey, who left the note? You have something you wanna confess?”

Matt jerks back to his body, “What?”

Foggy’s hand waves something near Matt’s face, paper, going by the flapping noise. Matt reaches gingerly up, favouring his stomach, and takes the paper. He runs the fingers of his other hand over its surface. The words are written firmly with a pen, he traces their outline. Sucks in a breath too quickly. Sits up and hisses when his stitches pull.

Foggy stops moving in the kitchen, heart beating outside its regular rhythm.

“S’okay.” Matt holds his stomach gingerly as he lowers himself back down. Nothing he can do now. He inhales through his nose, focusing on every smell. Filtering out Foggy and the lemon scented cleaner he’s using on the dishes.

Bergamot. Jasmine. Vanilla. Orange blossom. A distinctive perfume Matt connects in his mind to winter. Laugh like broken china. Kiss on his cheek like a brand on his skin.

He runs his fingers over the note again and again, “Nice seeing you, danger boy.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! As always, comments are love. I'm planning on writing lots more for these two, more romance in the future. And angst. I'm expecting lots of angst.


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